The present invention relates to hot beverage brewing apparatus and, more particularly, to the type used as merchandisers for brewing and selling predetermined amounts of hot beverages of various types.
There are many types of hot beverage brewing apparatus that use a variety of constructions and techniques for brewing and dispensing. Some, for example, utilize pressurized brewing chambers to shorten the brewing time. Others utilize brewing chambers that are open to atmosphere, but which are designed to agitate and mix the brewing liquid and product in some manner to shorten the brewing time. In either form of device the object is to use the least amount of beverage product, such as tea or coffee grounds, to obtain the maximum flavor for the volume of water used, in the shortest possible time. Although the pressurized brewer is effective in shortening the brewing time, prior art constructions are fairly complex in construction and thus are difficult to disassemble and clean. Likewise, prior art constructions of open brewing chambers generally utilize pistons to form the bottom of the brewing chamber which is difficult to maintain without leakage and is difficult to clean. Since almost all such hot drink merchandisers are intended to be left at an unattended location for substantial periods of time, such as several days, it is essential that they can be easily and quickly cleaned.
The prior art constructions of piston-type brewing chambers referred to above are particularly prone to wear because of the sliding contact between the piston and sealing rings and the brewing cylinder wall. This wear results in a frequent need of disassembly and replacement of the worn parts which is time consuming, relatively complex and expensive. Many such devices rely on the upward movement of the piston at the beginning of the brewing cycle to create agitation of the liquid and beverage product from which the flavor is to be extracted. This technique does not uniformly mix the product and liquid and is thus relatively inefficient and results in the need for use of more beverage product than would otherwise be necessary.
In some designs of hot beverage merchandisers it is a desirable feature to be able to fill a carafe as well as a single cup. This presents a problem, however, since the carafe is usually much taller than a single cup because it holds multiple cups of beverage. Thus, in some prior art machines it has been known to use a folding cup station which can be swung out of the way so that a carafe may be positioned on a lower stationary shelf for filling. The difficulty with such folding cup stations of the prior art is that they are difficult to manipulate and tend to rest against the carafe and push it off of the stationary shelf. Still other cup stations in prior art devices are simply removable and, thus, tend to be lost.